Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald apologized today for mistakenly saying in a videotaped exchange with a homeless man that he had served in the special forces, though his service was entirely with the 82nd Airborne Division. "Secretary McDonald has apologized for the misstatement and noted that he never intended to misrepresent his military service," a White House officials told ABC News. "We take him at his word and expect that this will not impact the important work he's doing to promote the health and well-being of our nation's veterans." The exchange with the homeless man was part of a report...

The only reason Joe Biden gets away with getting handsy with women is because he has a (D) after his name There isn’t anything new about men in positions of power behaving inappropriately. A handsy boss, who has no filter and no fear of offending, is a staple of old movies and shows like Mad Men. For much of history people just looked the other way. These men were too powerful, to criticize them was to cross them, and to cross them might mean a lot of trouble for the whistleblower. Your career might be lost, your family ostracized.

The day after Christmas, Weldin, of Minatare, Neb., had logged on to Facebook to find a message from a friend of hers. Included in the note was a link to an article from the Omaha World-Herald announcing that CoOportunity Health, a nonprofit health insurance company offering plans in Nebraska and Iowa, had been taken over by state regulators. The insurer, one of 23 Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans, or co-ops, started with the backing of the federal government and received $145 million in loans from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But, CoOportunity’s expenses and medical claims would far...

The Republican National Committee is looking for Hillary Clinton. Which is why, according to a memo they've sent to the press, they're asking, “Where’s Hillary?” "We’ve noticed it. You’ve noticed it: Hillary Clinton is hiding," reads the memo from Sean Spicer, communications director. "Potential Republican presidential candidates are out in public, speaking to voters, and sharing their ideas. But Hillary Clinton is nowhere to be found." Well, we do know she tweeted. Hillary’s only public appearances in 2015 have been in Canada. And in the previous year, almost every public appearance she made came with huge speaking fees—a quarter million...

The University of California Student Association board – which represents all 233,000 students enrolled in the UC system’s 10 campuses – approved a resolution on Sunday that calls on the system’s leaders to financially divest from the United States. The measure cited alleged human rights violations by America such as drone strikes that have killed civilians, and claimed the country’s criminal justice system is racist, among other accusations. The “Resolution Toward Socially Responsible Investment at the University of California” passed with an overwhelming majority vote of 11-1-3.

I was the pilot in command of the flight that carried Brian Williams into Iraq in March 2003. The mission was to deliver bridges to the Objective Rams region in order to support our ground-force advancement. We were briefed that we would be operating forward of the line of troops and that the objective was unsecure. We were a flight of two, and I was the rear aircraft. Our flight to Objective Rams was uneventful, with the exception of a desert dust storm that caused deteriorating conditions not suitable for flight. We determined that we would not make it back...

Vast ranges of volcanoes hidden under the oceans are presumed by scientists to be the gentle giants of the planet, oozing lava at slow, steady rates along mid-ocean ridges. But a new study shows that they flare up on strikingly regular cycles, ranging from two weeks to 100,000 years -- and, that they erupt almost exclusively during the first six months of each year. The pulses -- apparently tied to short- and long-term changes in earth's orbit, and to sea levels--may help trigger natural climate swings. Scientists have already speculated that volcanic cycles on land emitting large amounts of carbon...

Anthem Inc., the country’s second-biggest health insurer, said hackers broke into a database containing personal information for about 80 million of its customers and employees in what is likely to be the largest data breach disclosed by a health-care company. Investigators are still determining the extent of the incursion, which was discovered last week, and Anthem said it is likely that “tens of millions” of records were stolen. The health insurer said the breach exposed names, birthdays, addresses and Social Security numbers but doesn’t appear to involve medical information or financial details such as credit-card or bank-account numbers, nor are...

Weed history is being made in Seattle: the first vending machines to dispense marijuana flower buds debuted Tuesday. The machines, called ZaZZZ, are being placed in medical pot dispensaries, which helps to verify customer's age and identity since medical marijuana cards are required to enter the centers, said Greg Patrick, a spokesman for the maker of ZaZZZ, American Green. Though vending machines appeared for the first time in Colorado last year, those sold only edibles, or cannabis-infused foods, and not the plant's flower buds that are so often associated with smoking pot.

Cases like this are fueling a growing debate about the accuracy of "vegetative state" and "brain death" diagnoses. airlift(Harlow, England) - Martin Pistorius hates Barney. And it's no wonder why. For 12 years, while he was in a coma that doctors described as a "vegetative state," nurses, thinking that he couldn't see or hear anything, played endless re-runs of Barney as he sat, strapped into his wheel chair. (Photo via Life Site News) But Martin wasn't the "vegetable" that doctors said he was. In fact, he could see and hear everything. "I cannot even express to you how much I...

Two stars from the Seattle Seahawks took time away from the field to cut an ad shilling for Obamacare. The ad, posted Friday, features Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson and rhetorically explosive cornerback Richard Sherman touting the benefits of President Obama’s healthcare law and its web portal Healthcare.gov.

Free community college for all. Conversation-starter? Definitely. Political possibility? Not any time soon. President Obama unveiled the idea in a video posted to Facebook on Thursday night. But administration officials provided no price tag, no legislation, and little evidence of Republican support on Capitol Hill. But the White House says that’s beside the point at this stage. The president hopes “to start a conversation,” Obama domestic policy adviser Cecilia Munoz told reporters.

California's budget, which bounced back after years of deficits, is now being squeezed by rising healthcare costs for the poor and for retired state workers.. The mountain of medical bills threatens to undermine Gov. Jerry Brown's efforts to strengthen state finances — his central promise of the past four years. Enrollment in the state's healthcare program for the poor, known as Medi-Cal, has exploded by 50% since President Obama's signature law took effect. Although the federal government picks up most of the tab, state costs have also been growing, and faster than expected.

A British soldier “shakes hands” with a kitten on a snowy bank, Neulette, 1917. In the Christmas truce film Joyeux Noël, a cat runs back and forth between the enemy trenches to soldiers that feed it. One names the cat Felix and the other Nestor, and when the two meet in No Man’s Land during thet ruce, a sweet argument ensues between the two men over whose cat it is and what is, in fact, its name. The director of the film, Carion, drew on a real life story of a cat who did this during the truce and was...

Researchers have developed a new 'illusion coating' that could hide things by making them look like something else or even completely disappear. "Previous attempts at cloaking using a single meta-surface layer were restricted to very small-sized objects," said Zhi Hao Jiang, postdoctoral fellow in electrical engineering, Pennsylvania State University. Jiang and Douglas H Werner developed a meta-material coating with a negligible thickness that allows coated objects to function normally while appearing as something other than what they really are, or even completely disappearing. The researchers employ what they call "illusion coatings," coatings made up of a thin flexible substrate with...

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the first flight of the SR-71 Blackbird, the Air Force’s sleek, high-flying Cold War reconnaissance workhorse that still holds several world air-speed records. Here’s a look back at the amazing aircraft.

Full Title: Why do you MANSPREAD? Woman with her tape measure confronts splay-legged men on the subway about the space they consume It is a gripe that frustrates subway riders daily: men with their legs splayed. So one woman decided to confront male commuters about the amount of space they consume. The investigation comes a month before New York City's MTA launches a campaign targeting 'manspreaders'.

House and Senate conferees negotiating a package to fund the Department of Defense through September 2015 have protected commissary operations by restoring 90 percent of a planned $100 million cut. Once again lawmakers thwarted a cost-saving initiative targeting military compensation and endorsed by the Joint Chiefs as a way to dampen personnel costs so more dollars can be spent on training, weapon buys and other readiness accounts being victimized by arbitrary “sequestration” cuts. Only last week House and Senate conferees on a different bill, the 2015 defense authorization act, unveiled a deal to lower the Defense Commissary Agency annual $1.3...

The father of the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” slogan has just been employed by the United States government. Dorian Johnson, the star witness to the Michael Brown shooting and the man who was assisting Brown during the strong-arm robbery moments before Brown was killed, has been hired by the city of St. Louis. According to STltoday.com, “Jeff Rainford, Mayor Francis Slay's chief of staff, has confirmed that Johnson was hired under a state grant through the city's Agency on Training and Employment, or SLATE.” Meeting the low income eligibility requirements, the 22-year-old will be holding the temporary position and will...

Torii Hunter is an anti-gay bigot. This is something he has proven with his own words on multiple occasions. Yesterday, at the press conference to announce the one-year, $10.5 million deal he signed to return to the Minnesota Twins, beat writer Mike Berardino of the Saint Paul Pioneer-Press asked him about those beliefs—specifically, in the context of how Hunter thought supporting Arkansas Republican Governor-elect Asa Hutchinson in his recent election had affected his free agency. Torii Hunter Says Homosexuality Is "Not Right" (Then Claims He Was Misquoted) Hunter's response: You got some people who are just messy, you know? So,...

Two bucks each tangled by the antlers in the same nylon rope were pulling against each other until a game warden came up with a clever solution. A Texas game warden came to the rescue of two bucks that were trapped in an unusual way—both deer had their antlers tangled in the same nylon rope and were pulling against each other around the pole of a clothesline in the backyard of someone’s house. The unidentified Texas game warden in Comal County used a clever strategy to free the animals, which were thrashing about with their survival in jeopardy: The Texas...

Deflation has had a bad rap, largely based on the experience of the 1930's when deflation was synonymous with depression. Recent experience with declining prices in Japan and China together with the concern over deflation in Europe and the United States has led to renewed attention to the topic of deflation. In this paper we focus our attention on the deflation experience of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany in the late nineteenth century during a period characterized by low deflation, rapid productivity growth, positive output growth, and where many nations had a credible nominal anchor based on...

Oil companies are getting thrashed by falling oil prices. Some analysts predict that there will be no new net investment in the U.S. oil and gas industry in 2015, and the possibility of declining investment in 2016. At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency is pummeling the industry with a new set of National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone (NAAQS), released the day before Thanksgiving. Congress has little control over oil prices, which are set in world markets, but it does have authority over the EPA. The EPA’s new 626-page ozone regulation, accompanied by a 575-page Regulatory Impact...

A 350-pound Walmart shopper was arrested yesterday after he was found sitting atop five stolen rib eye steaks in the seat of a motorized scooter that he was riding around the South Carolina store. Rodney Fowler, 43, was spotted Tuesday afternoon placing the steaks in his scooter by a Walmart loss prevention officer, according to a police report. “Suspect sat on the steaks and exited the store passing all points of sale, without attempting to pay for said merchandise,” cops noted.

CHICAGO — When Chicago Public Schools student Jennifer Gonzalez stepped up to a White House podium Monday, nervous to give a speech in front of first lady Michelle Obama and dozens of other dignitaries, she fell back on her theater training. Gonzalez, 16, also got to chat with the first lady as photos were snapped before the event. "When I told her I was from Chicago, she said 'It's an honor for you to represent my hometown,'" Gonzalez said.

Despite millions spent to make climate change a wedge issue during the midterms, environmentally friendly candidates didn’t fare well on Election Day. Green groups funneled an unprecedented amount of money into top Senate races that determined control of the upper chamber but fell short. The nation’s top environmental groups including the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and billionaire Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate spent at least $85 million on six Senate races. Out of those six races, only two candidates willing to take action on climate change won their races....

Obama’s Pennsylvania stop for gubernatorial hopeful Tom Wolf was a subpar affair in terms of turnout, with only about a quarter of the seats at the venue taken — a sharp contrast to the commander-in-chief’s earlier politicking days of packed stadiums. The White House pool report said that Mr. Obama’s speech at a basketball arena in Philadelphia was markedly empty — and that was after those prepping the venue partitioned off several hundred seats to make the speaking area smaller and more intimate. Press in attendance even noted that the floor area was dotted with spaces.

The tale of the engines that propelled the Antares rocket, which exploded in a spectacular ball of flame in Virginia Tuesday night, begins four decades ago, thousands of miles away, in the land of communism and Sputnik. There, in the Soviet Union, rocket scientists conceived and built dozens of rocket engines meant to power Russian astronauts into the cosmos. But it didn’t work out that way. Instead, all four launches of the mighty N1 Soviet rocket, which used an earlier iteration of the first-stage engines used in Thursday’s launch, failed between 1969 and 1972. And as the Soviet Union abandoned...

Colombia, Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago have all announced travel bans as Ebola concerns grow. Colombian authorities announced that anyone entering their country from Ebola-stricken countries will face heavy scrutiny. Colombia’s National Health Institutes have said they developed a questionnaire to determine who should be under suspicion of potentially having contact with Ebola. Colombian newspapers have reported that some have already been detained due to the newly instituted executive actions. Fernando Ruiz, Colombia’s vice minister of health, said of the reports, “The cases are not suspicious. They are simply people who have traveled to places where Ebola is present....

For the first time in Ohio history, a prison inmate has been diagnosed with leprosy, state corrections officials said Thursday. The inmate, whose name was not released, was diagnosed with the chronic bacterial infection on Tuesday at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, according to the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. The infected prisoner is a native of Micronesia, a region of islands in the Pacific Ocean, and has served time at three other Ohio prisons since 2011, according to Stuart Hudson, the DRC's managing director of health care and fiscal operations. He's now being treated at Ohio State University Medical Center...

Gwyneth Paltrow has won numerous awards for her acting, but speaking apparently came with some difficulty Thursday with President Barack Obama standing beside her. "You're so handsome that I can't speak properly," the actress, singer and food writer gushed after introducing Obama to several hundred supporters seated on white fold-out chairs in the lush backyard of her home in the movie star haven of Brentwood, a neighborhood in Los Angeles. In a not-so-subtle reference to her "conscious uncoupling" earlier this year from husband Chris Martin, Paltrow said it was a "profound honor" to have Obama in the home she shares...

It’s not your imagination: the stock market has gone a little bonkers lately. This week alone the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) plummeted 272 points on Tuesday, rocketed back 274 points Wednesday and sank more than 330 points today. October has already recorded five days where stocks moved more than 1%. That’s as many 1% moves as we saw in the prior five months combined. So why are stocks so crazy? There’s no set answer but here are three of the most obvious explanations making the rounds on Wall Street.

Los Angelenos will have lots of time on the roads this afternoon to contemplate the midterm elections when President Obama flies in for one of those “Hollywood fundraisers” news outlets love to sniff at — especially this one, at the home of Gwyneth Paltrow. Gwyneth’s Brentwood neighborhood was festooned with Obama Drone non-fan posters in anticipation of the president’s visit — tickets to which raised $1K to $32K per head for the Democratic National Committee, depending on whether the ticket holder wanted to actually get dinner as well as a photo with Obama. Press already is reporting that Obama plans...

A turkey on Highway 1 caused a Canadian motorcycle rider to crash sometime early Monday, and the man told investigators he then walked to a coastal bluff and jumped off, naked. The 27-year-old Alberta man had shed his clothing as he walked and was found, nude and seriously injured, on rocks about 40 feet below a coastal bluff in Salt Point State Park. The CHP is investigating the man’s crash and a Sonoma County sheriff’s investigator is looking into what happened afterward, including whether he was trying to die or hurt himself or acted because of his injuries, said CHP...

"Yet some scientists who have long studied Ebola say such assurances are premature — and they are concerned about what is not known about the strain now on the loose. It is an Ebola outbreak like none seen before, jumping from the bush to urban areas, giving the virus more opportunities to evolve as it passes through multiple human hosts. Dr. C.J. Peters, who battled a 1989 outbreak of the virus among research monkeys housed in Virginia and who later led the CDC’s most far-reaching study of Ebola’s transmissibility in humans, said he would not rule out the possibility that...

'In 1976 I discovered Ebola, now I fear an unimaginable tragedy' Peter Piot was a researcher at a lab in Antwerp when a pilot brought him a blood sample from a Belgian nun who had fallen mysteriously ill in Zaire...

As she weighs another bid for the White House, Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday she has a "grandmother glow" that's fueling her campaign for female empowerment and gender equality around the world. Speaking to a national convention of female real estate professionals, the former secretary of state and potential 2016 Democratic presidential contender called on business and political leaders to close the gap in wages and leadership positions between men and women. Clinton, who joked that she felt that glow after the recent birth of her first grandchild, Charlotte, said she wanted all women to grow up in a world...

An Oklahoma man who had been suspended from his job was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder in the gruesome beheading of a co-worker, who was attacked from behind as the man sought revenge, a prosecutor said Tuesday. Alton Nolen, 30, could face the death penalty for Thursday’s deadly attack on Colleen Hufford, 54, at the Vaughan Foods plant in Moore. He also faces two assault charges.

THE WHITE HOUSE — In an interview with 60 Minutes on CBS that aired Sunday, President Obama called on the leaders of ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, to exercise more moderation and inclusivity in their beheadings of infidels. The president was responding to a question from 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, who asked whether the administration was specifically addressing the beheadings and mutilations of thousands of Yazidi, Kurdish and other minority groups in northern Iraq and eastern Syria. Read more: http://www.duffelblog.com/2014/09/president-calls-isil-moderate-inclusive-beheadings/#ixzz3EkBcq1BU

The leaders of a new, Christian movement think they’ve solved a centuries-old mystery: why men are absent from church. But their answer isn’t politically correct. They believe Christianity has become feminized. There are generally more women than men in every type of church, in every part of the world, according to church growth experts like Patrick Johnstone, author of Operation World. A traditional explanation is that women are more spiritual than men. But the leaders of this new movement suggest that the church’s music, messages and ministries cater to women. One of the leaders is David Murrow, author of a...

California Governor Jerry Brown, a self-proclaimed crusader against climate change and a major backer of electric cars, signed a bundle of bills this weekend aimed at tipping the scales further in favor of zero-emission vehicles. The main piece of legislation, called the Charge Ahead California Initiative, sets a target of putting at least a million zero-emission or near-zero-emission vehicles on the state’s roads by 2023. To get there, the initiative asks that the state Air Resources Board devise a financial plan that would make it easier for low-income drivers to buy electric cars by extending extra credits to them so...

In Boyers, Pa., a recently opened 2,000-sq.-ft. data center has been purpose-built to protect against an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), either generated by a solar storm or a nuclear event. balticservers data center

On ESPN’s “SportsCenter” earlier this week, espnW columnist Kate Fagan argued that the big picture in the controversy surrounding former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice’s domestic violence allegations. According Fagan, the problem needs to be tackled at the so-called grassroots level when men are in their formative years. “Well, I think right now we're talking so much about firing Goodell or punishments. You know, should it be a three game, a two game, a six game, a full year ban? But I think that's a little reactive and not proactive. Domestic violence is something that happens in anger, in...

(CNN) -- Atlanta Hawks general manager Danny Ferry is taking an indefinite leave of absence, the NBA team's CEO announced Friday, days after a report surfaced about comments Ferry allegedly made about a free agent player. Ferry made the remarks about Luol Deng during a June conference call about prospective players, according to a letter obtained by CNN affiliate WSB. J. Michael Gearon Jr., a minority owner of the Hawks, wrote that in that letter that Ferry described some of Deng's negatives, stating that "he has a little African in him. Not in a bad way, but he's like a...

Right now in the United States, there are more 23-year-olds than people of any other age. This seemingly trivial fact of demographics is an anomaly more than 50 years in the making. According to U.S. Census data, since 1947, the most represented age in the United States has always been a member of the group born in the 20 years after WWII, the baby boomers. In 1950, it was age 3. In 1990, it was 29. In 2010, it was 50. [snip]

Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson is selling his controlling interest in the team, NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced Sunday. In July, Levenson self-reported an email he wrote to the team's co-owners and general manager Danny Ferry in August 2012 that he called "inappropriate and offensive." The league commenced an independent investigation after being made aware of the comments.